Adding to our woes

Nothing seems to be going right for Pakistan and the list of our problems is long and painful.

There is considerable truth to the adage that ‘when it rains, it pours’. Nothing seems to be going right for Pakistan and the reference here is not merely to our domestic travails, whose list is long and painful.

At a time when Pakistan’s relations with its ‘strategic ally’ appear to have entered a deep chill, with threats and warnings being hurled with alarming frequency and intensity, Afghanistan and India have concluded a strategic agreement, which can only add to our worries and woes.

The Foreign Office has done the right thing to adopt a detached view, remarking that as sovereign states, India and Afghanistan can do whatever they like. The reality and complexity of international relations, however, do not permit any state the luxury of such philosophical approaches.

In this context, I cannot help but recall the seething anger with which Soviet officials had reacted to Pakistan’s role in bringing together the US and China. Characterising it as a “game changer in global politics”, Soviet officials had warned that it would neither “be forgotten nor forgiven”, a reaction that then appeared highly exaggerated, but the Soviet assessment was correct. As Henry Kissinger has written, “the re-entry of China into the global diplomatic game and the increased strategic options for the United States, gave a new vitality and flexibility to the international system”, while the Chinese leadership described it as an instance of Beijing “utilising contradictions, dividing up enemies, and enhancing ourselves”.

This event, more than anything, galvanised the Soviets to respond to India’s urgings for a formal understanding. Within weeks, the two had entered into the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Mutual Cooperation, which proved, to our dismay, that while we may not have appreciated the significance of our action, it pushed Moscow inexorably into Delhi’s embrace, providing the latter the carte blanche to do what it had always intended.

The timing of the Indo-Afghan Treaty could not have been worse, with unprecedented pressure being mounted on Pakistan. While much of it may be on account of our mistakes and failures, some of it can also be ascribed to the turf war currently underway between the White House and the American intelligence-military combine. The latter, it is rumoured, does not share Obama’s desire to see an end to American combat troop presence in Afghanistan by 2014. In such a scenario, Washington is likely to find fault with whatever Islamabad does. Are reports of US surreptitiously encouraging Kyrgyzstan to stand in opposition to Pakistan in the forthcoming UN Security Council election, evidence of this attitude?

President Hamid Karzai’s description of Pakistan as “twin brother” notwithstanding this treaty, providing for India’s growing involvement in Afghan security and military matters, will be viewed as evidence of India’s ambitions and therefore a cause for grave misgivings here. Our reaction must nevertheless be measured; this is a time for quiet diplomacy, not for public recriminations. In fact, the need is for identification of its “red lines”, as well as determination of what we may have done to push Karzai into India’s warm embrace, which was being suggested to him for some time. Why should Karzai accuse Pakistan of “pursuing a double game” in his country?

We need also to impress on both Afghanistan and India that any initiative which adds to Pakistan’s concerns, or is aimed at ‘squeezing’ it out of Kabul, would only add to existing tension in the region and further complicate an already messy situation in Afghanistan. Nor should it be in anyone’s interest to smother recent tentative moves in Pakistan to reach out to India.

Incidentally, the Indian prime minister’s promise “to stand by the people of Afghanistan” after withdrawal of foreign forces, brought back echoes of similar assurances given by President Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders to those Moscow had installed in Kabul. History knows of no crueler fate than of those with such soaring ambitions in Afghanistan!

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2011.